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"&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;em&gt;This article originally appeared in the the Nov. 9, 2015, issue of&lt;/em&gt; Sports Illustrated. &lt;em&gt;Subscribe to the magazine here.&amp;nbsp;&lt;/em&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Rockford, Ill., AAU team Fred VanVleet starred on during high school was called PrymeTyme\u2014a defiant name, given that the city\u2019s prime was so long past that none of the team\u2019s players nor most of their parents had been alive to see it. Rockford is one of the Rust Belt\u2019s worst casualties, a former manufacturing power 85 miles northwest of Chicago with a population of 150,000 and shrinking. In 1993 its school district was found guilty, in federal court, of decades of what a judge called \u201Ccruel\u201D discrimination against minority students, ranging from inferior facilities to substandard curricula. The city was ordered to make $252 million in changes, but the current struggles of Rockford\u2019s African-Americans are part of that ugly educational legacy: According to U.S. Census Bureau data from 2014, Rockford had the highest unemployment rate for black adults of any city in the nation, a staggering 28.9%.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Shoe companies have had no interest in sponsoring AAU teams from markets like Rockford, so for PrymeTyme to compete against the elite Nike and Adidas programs it had to fund-raise, collect dues and spend long hours driving (rather than flying) to tournaments. During those car rides coach Anthony (Doc) Cornell told stories about the closest Rockford had come to basketball greatness. And the one that VanVleet heard most\u2014to him, the most Rockford story of them all\u2014was about Lee Lampley.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CYou shoulda seen this guy,\u201D Cornell would say, conjuring images of gyms that drew fire-code-violation crowds to see the 6-foot Lampley \u201Dshoot the leather off the ball.\u201D There was the time in 1992 when Lampley had 32 points for Boylan Catholic in an upset of the No. 1-ranked Chicago King team that had a cameo in Hoop Dreams. Or the games during the 1993\u201394 season, when he averaged 29.9 points\u2014more than a Mount Carmel phenom named Antoine Walker\u2014and Lampley was named all-state, the last first-team selection from Rockford. Doc claimed that if Lampley hadn\u2019t lacked the grades to accept a scholarship to Illinois, hadn\u2019t been kicked off of two junior college teams, hadn\u2019t been convicted of trying to sell 23 bags of crack in a Rockford housing project in \u201897 and enough other felonies to spend long stints behind bars\u2014\u201DPeople would be saying that Steph Curry is the best shooter not since Ray Allen, but since Lee Lampley.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u2022 &lt;strong&gt;MORE: See all of SI.com's preseason college basketball coverage&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Old heads love telling stories about basketball coulda-beens\u2014cautionary tales that veer into mythology. VanVleet, PrymeTyme\u2019s 6-foot point guard who would go on to earn a 3.5 GPA at Auburn High, came to hate the Lampley story and others like it. He\u2019d watch NBA games and see proof of one version of the American dream\u2014black players who\u2019d made it out of some miserable hometown\u2014and it ate at him that none was ever from his hometown, which had gone decades without producing even a high-major, Division I black star. For the men who came before him in the same neighborhoods and the same schools, it seemed that all the dream did was die, again and again.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;So when people began praising VanVleet\u2019s play, it was as ominous as it was optimistic, so easily would he fit into another coulda-been lament. Illinois recruiting expert Cavan Walsh called VanVleet a magician who saw two steps ahead of everyone else on the floor. VanVleet was just a 15-year-old sophomore when his Auburn High coach, Bryan Ott, told the Rockford Register Star, \u201CIt seems like he almost always makes the right decisions at the right times.\u201D Cornell said he felt like Tony Dungy, because he had a young Peyton Manning running his offense. There were also conquests that might, years down the road, seem like myths: How in the spring and summer of 2011, PrymeTyme, with just two D-I prospects (VanVleet and eventual St. Bonaventure star Marcus Posley), took down powerful AAU teams such as Indiana Elite (with IU-bound Yogi Ferrell) and the Houston Defenders (with Kentucky-bound Aaron and Andrew Harrison) and went 32\u20134. Or how in March 2012, VanVleet\u2019s senior year, he led an Auburn team whose starting lineup topped out at 6 feet to the Illinois semifinals and was named first team all-state\u2014the first Rockford player so honored since Lampley.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But VanVleet has since defied the traditional narrative: He has continued to achieve. When people talk in a decade or two about the greatest four-season run by a mid-major, the debate will likely center around Butler, from 2007\u201308 through \u201810\u201311, and Wichita State, from \u201812\u201313 through \u201815\u201316, but there will be no argument over who was at the center of the Shockers\u2019 success\u2014a point guard who made it out of Rockford and made everyone around him better.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;After being ignored by Big Ten schools due to his stature (and, he believes, his hometown\u2019s rep), VanVleet committed to Wichita State in July 2011, and as a true freshman was the sixth man during its run to the \u201813 Final Four. As a sophomore starter, VanVleet became one of the best leaders in college basketball, piloting the Shockers to a national record 35\u20130 start before they fell to Kentucky in their second NCAA tournament game, and was named an honorable mention All-America. Last year he averaged 13.6 points and 5.2 assists while taking the Shockers to the Sweet 16, and this off-season both he and senior shooting guard Ron Baker passed on the NBA draft in order to make a fourth run at a national title.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In Wichita, where the Shockers have gone 95\u201315 during his career, VanVleet is the face of winning. He is sitting in a back-corner booth of a minimall deli during an October lunch hour, getting deep into a discussion of his Rockford youth, when he is interrupted by a woman, smartphone in hand, teenage members of the girls\u2019 tennis team from nearby Andover High timidly in tow.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CI\u2019m so sorry,\u201D the woman says, \u201CIt\u2019s just that tomorrow we have states, and we\u2019ve won back-to-back titles and we\u2019re going for a three-peat. So I thought, Who better to take a picture with than you for inspiration?\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;VanVleet is happy to oblige. Everyone smiles.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CAny tips for the girls?\u201D the woman asks. VanVleet pauses, and then sheepishly says, \u201CJust play hard\u2014and have fun.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It\u2019s not that VanVleet lacks an answer on what drives him to win. It\u2019s just that his answer isn\u2019t translatable for a group of suburban high school girls. \u201CMy whole mind-set growing up,\u201D VanVleet says later, \u201Cwas that I was not going to let myself be one of those Rockford people who didn\u2019t pan out. And I carried that chip with me to college\u2014that I need to be that one who actually breaks the stigma. Their failure is in the back of my head. That is what I\u2019m running from.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;*****\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The closer a story hits home, the more likely it is to gain unwanted purchase in your brain, to linger there and haunt you. Lampley\u2019s narrative did not begin in a packed gym in the \u201890s. It began on the front page of the Register Star, three days before Valentine\u2019s Day, in 1982. A man was found lying in a snowbank in an employee parking lot of SwedishAmerican Hospital, steps from his \u201876 Cadillac Brougham, dead of multiple shots from a large-caliber handgun. He was a surgical orderly, and in the late \u201860s he had served in the Army. He was 34, and among those he left behind was the six-year-old boy named after him: Lee A. Lampley Jr. When Lee Jr. was arrested for selling crack 15 years later, locals said they\u2019d seen his downfall coming. Despite his prodigious talent, he lacked the family structure to save him from Rockford\u2019s crime-infested streets.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;On April 16, 1999, the Register Star carried another story of a black man shot and killed. He\u2019d taken two bullets to the chest, at close range, in another man\u2019s apartment. The shooter claimed it was a break-in, but he was later charged with felony obstruction of justice for attempting to deceive police. The dead man was 28. In his prime, he\u2019d been a hyper-competitive 6'8\" forward at Rockford\u2019s Guilford High who drew interest from colleges. He never enrolled anywhere, and found work detailing cars. People called him Boomer or Darnell, his middle name. His real name was Fredderick Manning. Among those he left behind was a fianc\u00E9e, Susan VanVleet, with whom he\u2019d had two sons, seven-year-old Darnell, and five-year-old Fredderick, his namesake.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Susan summoned her boys to a couch in the basement of her parents\u2019 house just north of Rockford in Machesney Park, where they were all living, and explained that their father was gone. Fred was too young to process what had happened. He has no recollection of seeing his father\u2019s body at the funeral. Susan told him parts of the story as he aged, and eventually he learned that his father had been killed in a drug deal gone wrong. Fred has always been serious; but it was losing his father, Susan says, that turned Fred into \u201Ca kid who was angry at the world.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CI felt like I\u2019d been burned or that everybody owed me something,\u201D VanVleet says. He struggled with whom to blame; sometimes he blamed himself. \u201CYou ask yourself a million questions. Why was my dad not home with me that night? What did me or my brother or my mom do wrong? What did my grandparents do wrong, what did my dad do wrong? You\u2019re just trying to find an answer.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;In sixth grade he was the point guard on a Chicagoland club team that went to the AAU nationals in Hampton, Va.\u2014a very big deal. But when he called home to Susan during the tournament, he sounded, as he so often did, unhappy. She had tried many ways to cheer him up. This time she challenged him: \u201CHave you ever stopped and told God thank you for everything that he\u2019s made up for in your life?\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;She told Fred to consider that he was athletically gifted, intelligent on the court and in school\u2014and by then he had a new father figure. \u201CThings are coming easy to you,\u201D she said, \u201Cand it\u2019s almost like God was trying to give back to you what was taken away. If you acknowledged that sometime, it might get easier.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fred said O.K. They did not discuss it further. But when the team returned to Illinois, its coach, Brian Harvey, told Susan, \u201CYou\u2019re never gonna believe what happened. We weren\u2019t playing very well, and halfway through the tournament I was really yelling at the kids, and I give them a break and time to just chill out. I wanted them to think about what they were doing. The next thing I know Fred is asking them to all come in and say a prayer. What 12-year-old kid does that?\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Fred says he had a realization on that trip: The answer to all his questions about his dad, the questions that still made him angry, might be that there was no answer. That what you had to do, instead, was try to appreciate the present. Only then would things start to get easier.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;*****\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Rockford Police detectives on the day shift can get by with two-piece suits, but Joe Danforth insists on always wearing a three-piece. \u201CI just love that whole Untouchables look,\u201D he says, and on this October Tuesday he\u2019s wearing a charcoal ensemble over a cardinal-red dress shirt and a black silk tie, with his badge and a holstered Glock on his right hip. He is a bull of a man, with his head shaved slick, a former Army boxing-team middleweight and light heavyweight who fought for the Fort Hood (Texas) Worldbeaters in the \u201890s. The ringtone on his phone is rapper Bone Crusher\u2019s 2003 hit \u201CNever Scared,\u201D and Danforth carries himself with a jovial swagger suggesting just that\u2014even though Rockford\u2019s violent crime rate is the second-highest in the nation for cities under 200,000.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;This past summer, in Danforth\u2019s 20th year on the force, he was promoted to detective, and the first case he caught was the murder of 15-year-old Martavius Lewers. It was the 15th homicide in Rockford in 2015: a gunshot through a window of a residential music studio on the city\u2019s west side caught Martavius in the head while he was recording with friends. It remains unclear whether he was the target.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Danforth has worked 30-plus cases since\u2014home invasions, armed robberies and more, a leaning tower of manila accordion folders on his desk\u2014but the senselessness of the unsolved Lewers case wears on him. Danforth has coached basketball, running an AAU program called Rockford 5-0 because, he says, \u201Cyou can\u2019t let this job be your whole life.\u201D The left wall of his cubicle is decorated with three autographed pictures of teenagers playing hoops for the same school that Lewers attended, Auburn High: Danforth\u2019s oldest son, J.D., who\u2019s now 23; and his stepsons, Darnell and Fred VanVleet.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u200BDanforth was one of the policemen who responded to the scene of Manning\u2019s shooting in 1999. It was not until two years later that he encountered the VanVleets. J.D. and Fred\u2014then a second-grader\u2014were in the Fightin\u2019 Titan Boys Basketball Camp at Boylan High, where Lampley had played. Susan VanVleet and Danforth met in the gym that day; they started dating within a few months. Two years later Susan and her two boys joined Danforth and his two boys in their house on the northwest side.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CWe kind of did a Brady Bunch thing,\u201D Danforth says, and it was not the smoothest transition. Says Susan, \u201CJoe was ... very militant with the boys.\u201D What did Fred think? \u201CHe was a d---. He had everybody walking on eggshells.\u201D It was the opposite of the warm, lax environment at Susan\u2019s parents\u2019 house. Now there were bed checks, reprimands over a single unwashed dish and wake-up calls at 5:45 a.m. for intense workouts that included full-court one-on-one in weighted vests. The worst thing, VanVleet says, was when he had to get dropped off by Danforth at school: \u201CKids used to wear shirts with a stop sign that said snitching on it\u2014like, stop snitching\u2014and here I am pulling up to school in a cop car.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But for all of VanVleet\u2019s resistance\u2014he hated the extreme discipline and early workouts, and resented the fact that Danforth chose to coach J.D. in AAU and left Fred to play with PrymeTyme\u2014a funny thing happened: He started to acquire Danforth\u2019s mannerisms, obsession with detail and military mentality, to the extent that Doc Cornell would say to Danforth, \u201CI swear that\u2019s your damn kid.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Now, does Danforth deserve credit for VanVleet\u2019s court vision, Floyd Mayweather\u2013quick hands and the unshakable confidence to overrule a final-possession pick-and-roll play that Cornell called in a 2011 AAU game, say, \u201CI got this\u201D and proceed to bury a game-winning three? Not at all. \u201CThis ain\u2019t The Wizard of Oz,\u201D Danforth says. \u201CYou can\u2019t just give the Cowardly Lion a heart and expect that mother------ to fight, you know? That\u2019s gotta be in you, and that was in Fred.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;But VanVleet did need sharpening. \u201CA lot of things [Danforth] did for me hardened my mind,\u201D VanVleet says. \u201CHe gave me a mind-set that was calculated but aggressive, with no fear or regrets, like a war general.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That would be key to thriving under the Shockers\u2019 intense and exacting coach, Gregg Marshall, whose motto is Play angry. VanVleet began his freshman season buried at the back end of the rotation, gradually earned more minutes during Missouri Valley Conference play and then had his career kick-started in a peculiar way: After a loss to Creighton in the Shockers\u2019 last game before the NCAA tournament, Malcolm Armstead, the team\u2019s senior starting point guard, approached Marshall\u2019s wife, Lynn, son, Kellen, and daughter, Maggie, with a request. \u201CTell coach that Fred\u2019s gotta play,\u201D Kellen (now a student manager for Wichita State) recalls Armstead saying, while expressing a desire to play alongside VanVleet at the two. \u201CIt\u2019s my senior year, and I\u2019m trying to go to the Final Four.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The message was delivered, and Marshall put VanVleet on the floor for 20 minutes in the ninth-seeded Shockers\u2019 second-round meeting with No. 1 Gonzaga. With 1:28 left and the shot clock running down, VanVleet rewarded his coach by hitting the dagger three that put Wichita up five and out of the Zags\u2019 reach. In 24 minutes against Ohio State in the Elite Eight, VanVleet outplayed the celebrated Aaron Craft, and through all 2013 postseason games, VanVleet dished out 14 assists against just six turnovers.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;That year\u2019s Final Four, in Atlanta, was where the Shockers blew a late lead against eventual champion Louisville, but it was also where a protracted standoff between two hardheaded men came to an end.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Danforth had never been one to compliment VanVleet, only drive him; VanVleet, in turn, had never been one to acknowledge Danforth\u2019s contributions. The day before the Louisville game Danforth, who\u2019d driven to Atlanta and gotten caught up in the magnitude of the event, allowed himself a moment of vulnerability. He texted VanVleet to say, \u201CI love you. I\u2019m proud of you.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;VanVleet had never called Danforth \u201DDad,\u201D but he wrote back, \u201CIf you never felt like you were my dad, I want you to know, I do feel like you\u2019re my dad. You raised me, and I appreciate everything you\u2019ve done for me.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;*****\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;VanVleet returned to Wichita State and became its clear-cut leader. It was not a coincidence that the Shockers broke 1990\u201391 UNLV\u2019s record for most consecutive wins to start a season, and they entered the NCAA tournament 34\u20130 and ranked No. 2 in the nation. VanVleet was a 20-year-old sophomore in a rotation that included four seniors, but everyone considered him an old soul. He ran the offense with efficiency\u2014in one four-game stretch in December and January he had 23 assists and no turnovers, and his assist-to-turnover ratio in March was 36-to-8\u2014sat front row center during film sessions and was the team\u2019s most trusted voice in huddles and in the locker room. \u201CFred always has the right thing to say at the right time,\u201D Baker says. \u201CI don\u2019t know where he gets it from, but it\u2019s like music to your ears. It\u2019s always nice to hear his voice when we win\u2014and when we lose.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;After the most devastating loss of their careers\u2014their epic battle with No. 8\u2013seeded Kentucky in the NCAA tournament\u2019s round of 32, which came down to the final possession and left them five wins short of the first perfect season since Indiana in \u201875\u201376\u2014heads turned to VanVleet for wisdom. First he helped coax an inconsolable senior, Chadrack Lufile, out of their locker room bathroom at St. Louis\u2019s Scottrade Center, so that they could face the loss as a group (\u201CYou win together, you lose together\u201D), and then VanVleet reminded his teammates of their legacy. \u201CThis don\u2019t take away from nothing we\u2019ve been doing all year,\u201D VanVleet told the room. \u201CEverybody\u2019s got futures in this.... This is not ending.\u201D When Baker was moping on the bus outside the arena, VanVleet heaped positives on him: Neither of them had arrived at Wichita as NBA prospects, and they had just gone toe-to-toe with a team that had five future draftees. VanVleet knew that he and Baker would be together in more NCAA tournaments, and he wanted to build his teammate back up.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;He did all this even though he was the one who missed the potential game-winning three, from the top of the key, as time expired. That goes in, Wichita keeps winning, and who knows? He might have been able to ride that fame to the draft, where he was viewed as a fringe first-round prospect. There was also the strong possibility that VanVleet had played most of the second half in a partial fog. After committing an offensive foul on a drive with 16:32 left in the game, he hit his head on the floor and was nearly knocked out; he remained a bit off following the collision.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;VanVleet spent the postgame press conference wincing at the lights and feeling his head throb, and for the first time in his life a teammate, Cleanthony Early, asked him about part of a play that he could not clearly remember. After the press conference, when the team\u2019s trainer gave VanVleet a concussion test, he declined to acknowledge any symptoms. He felt there was minimal risk; the season was over. \u201CI didn\u2019t want that to be the story line: He didn\u2019t play as well as he could have, he missed the shot, oh\u2014he had a concussion,\u201D VanVleet says. \u201CI think I had a concussion; I just didn\u2019t want to tell anybody.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For better or worse VanVleet believes that showing weakness limits his ability to inspire teammates\u2014and that being a leader \u201Cmeans that I could get everybody on my team to come fight with me.\u201D He means this literally: \u201CSome guys would take a lot more work than others, but if I got in a fight, I know that I could convince everyone to have my back. If you can get them to do that, then you can get them to chase a rebound or believe in themselves to make a shot.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Or persuade them that they can come back in 2014\u201315, win 30 more games, and beat Kansas to go to the Sweet 16; or that this season they can leverage the advantages of having the most seasoned lineup of any elite team. Wichita State is likely to start four seniors\u2014forwards Anton Grady and Evan Wessel, and guards Baker and VanVleet\u2014and no coach has more trust in his point guard\u2019s grasp of an offense and knowledge of personnel than Marshall. \u201CWith Fred, it\u2019s like having a head coach on the floor,\u201D Marshall says. \u201CHe\u2019s got the ability and the freedom from me to audible-ize anytime he wants.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The Shockers\u2019 veterans have the freedom to self-police, running a kangaroo court in their locker room at Charles Koch Arena. If someone is charged with violating the team\u2019s unwritten code\u2014such as in September, when a freshman was alleged to have flirted with a teammate\u2019s female friend, and possibly to have impugned that teammate\u2019s character in the process\u2014he is hauled before the court. The primary judge, from the vantage of his corner locker, is VanVleet. And these are the rarer occasions when VanVleet is not overly serious. \u201CIt\u2019s as good as an SNL skit,\u201D says one observer. \u201CFreshmen pleading to Fred, him shaking his head, saying, \u2018Oh, no, I can\u2019t allow that.\u2019\u201C\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u201CI give people a chance to present their case,\u201D VanVleet explains, with a smirk. \u201CThen we bring out the evidence and convict them. Because most of the time it\u2019s just a guy who\u2019s wrong, who won\u2019t admit he\u2019s wrong. And we take care of it ourselves.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;*****\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;For the&amp;nbsp;Danforths and VanVleets, 2015 has been a year of coming together. In May, after 11 years of cohabitation\u2014and having a daughter, Aaliyah\u2014Joe and Susan were married at a Rockford church. In June, Darnell, who had played briefly at Illinois Central College and also coached Auburn High\u2019s freshman team, moved to Wichita to be with Fred for his senior season; J.D., whose playing career ended at NAIA Ashford University in Clinton, Iowa, last year, joined them for three months. Shontai Neal, VanVleet\u2019s girlfriend since high school and a fellow WSU student, lives with VanVleet and Darnell in a split-level duplex four miles east of campus. The living room\u2019s decorations include a Shockers flag, a bench chair from the 2013 Final Four and the \u201814 Larry Bird Trophy, which VanVleet received as the conference player of the year.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Growing up, VanVleet used to help his older brothers with their homework, and at 21 he persuaded them to come to Wichita. \u201CDarnell especially, I wanted him to get out and see other things, like what a millionaire\u2019s house looks like,\u201D says VanVleet, whose coach, Marshall, has a new contract that pays $3 million annually. \u201CThere\u2019s no opportunity in Rockford, so if you stay there, you don\u2019t see the world as very big.\u201D (Darnell, when asked if he misses being back home, says, \u201CNo, I don\u2019t miss it one bit.\u201D)\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;VanVleet, a sociology major, recently tweeted a study from 247WallSt.com that called Rockford the second-worst city for black Americans, behind only Milwaukee. It highlighted Rockford\u2019s alarming black unemployment rate and the huge gap between the median household income of whites ($51,264) and blacks ($22,651) in the metro area. The data reinforced what he believed growing up as a black-identifying child of a biracial family\u2014\u201DEverybody knows,\u201D he says, \u201Cthat Rockford is racist\u201D\u2014and reminded him that his city has a long way to go in addressing inequality. VanVleet\u2019s hope is that when he\u2019s made enough money playing basketball, and has some financial leverage, he can help fix a west side school system whose curriculum, he believes, fails to emphasize practical learning, does not teach enough black history and promotes inept students until they\u2019re old enough to drop out.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;\u2022&amp;nbsp;\u200B&lt;strong&gt;MORE: Wichita State a No. 2 seed in our NCAA first bracket projection&lt;/strong&gt;\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;As the graduation speaker for Auburn High\u2019s class of 2014, VanVleet told the crowd at BMO Harris Bank Center, \u201CThey\u2019re always telling us, \u2018Rockford is a miserable place to live. There\u2019s not a lot of talent coming out of Rockford.\u2019 Blah, blah, blah. You know the rest of the story. I look at it like there\u2019s only two things you can do about it. You can live up to it and make it worse or you can change it and make it better.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;It was during that same off-season that VanVleet went to play pickup in the small gym at Northwest Community Center, where Doc Cornell had invited some of Rockford\u2019s old heads and young prospects. One of them was a 39-year-old who did not, at first glance, look the part of a baller. He wore a do-rag and jean shorts, and his right arm was permanently bent, the result of some childhood injury. But he could get that arm into shooting position just fine, and as VanVleet saw it, \u201CThe guy\u2019s jumper was perfect\u2014wet, all the way to half-court.\u201D The guy was Lee Lampley.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;Lampley had been released from the Danville (Ill.) Correctional Center in February 2014, after serving four years for possession of between 100 and 400 grams of cocaine. He had heard about VanVleet, seen him on TV since getting out of jail, and wanted to talk to him.\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;VanVleet ended up giving Lampley a ride home, during which he said a couple of things: I hope you learn from my mistakes. And: I knew your real dad. Lampley had been in the same drug game as Manning and said he could find some answers. VanVleet was returning to Wichita the next day, so they exchanged numbers. \u201CI\u2019m going to call you when you get back to school,\u201D Lampley told him, \u201Cand I\u2019m gonna let you know what really happened.\u201D\r\n\r\n&lt;/p&gt;&lt;p&gt;The call never came. But really, VanVleet had stopped needing answers long ago. He was O.K. with how he and Lampley had parted ways. The last thing VanVleet had said, upon dropping off the greatest player who never made it out of Rockford, a man 19 years his elder, was stay out of trouble.\r\n&lt;/p&gt;"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.si.com/college-basketball/2015/11/12/fred-vanvleet-wichita-state-shockers-ncaa-tournament-gregg-marshall>